urban anthropology

Urban anthropology is a field within anthropology concerned with the study of large scale communities. Prior to the 1960s anthropology focused almost entirely on small scale communities. Ulf Hannerz quotes a 1960s remark that traditional anthropologists were "a notoriously agoraphobic lot, anti-urban by definition". Various social processes in the Western World as well as in the "Third World" (the latter being the habitual focus of attention of anthropologists) brought the attention of "specialists in 'other cultures'" closer to their homes.